The problem is that many people don’t value knowing what is real and true as much as they value reinforcing what they want to believe. The fake news and false conspiracy theories are very popular, or there would not be a huge industry now that is paid a lot of money to churn out more of it to satisfy the demand and accomplish the financial or political goals (or both) of the people producing the stuff. We have much more information at our disposal now than even 20 years or 30 years ago - but our interest in evaluating the accuracy or inaccuracy of that information has not progressed beyond the Salem witch trials.
It isn’t that difficult to figure out where the most accurate sources of information are, on a given topic. If I want to learn about astrology, I ask an astrologist familiar with it. If I want to learn how to decorate a cake, I ask a baker. When it comes to learning what is true and what is not true with regard to a pandemic and deadly virus, I seek out sources who obtain their information using scientific methods best suited to producing accurate and reliable results on the relevant questions.
It helps to do a few minutes of reading on the basics of statistics, but it isn’t necessary to understand what a regression analysis is, or what a “p” value is, to know who produces peer-reviewed, scientific research with the least bias possible, and who will report changes in data and adjust their models, predictions, and recommendations accordingly. Unfortunately, many people have been led to believe (and want to believe) that any scientific body that changes its mind about a science issue because of new data, as it should, is “unreliable” or “lying.”
As for the major media, when one reads a report about a scientific issue in the major media, before deciding whether it is accurate or inaccurate one should determine where the reported information comes from and what methods were used to produce that information. Why should you give equal weight to everything everybody tells you, without considering where that information came from and how it was derived?
Again, if you’re motivated to learn about which media are more reliable for facts than others, there are sources of reporting on that that use methods that try to eliminate bias and determine who tells the truth, and who makes fewer mistakes in reporting, most often. But that is no substitute for always considering the source of the data being reported by the media source and looking at how that data was obtained.